. Brewster referred the application to me. I
couldn't agree, and I had to turn him down. I am telling you this so
you'll be easy with him--as easy as you can. I don't know him
personally, but if you can keep him on----"

"I shall be only too glad to keep him, if he knows his business and will
stay," was Lidgerwood's reply. Then, with another glance at his watch,
"Shall we go up-town and get dinner? Afterward you can give me your
notion in the large about the future extension of the road across the
second Timanyoni, and I'll order out the service-car and an engine and
go to my place. A man can die but once; and maybe I shall contrive to
live long enough to set a few stakes for some better fellow to drive.
Let's go."

* * * * *

At ten o'clock that night Engine 266, Williams, engineer, and Blackmar,
fireman, was chalked up on the Red Butte Western roundhouse
bulletin-board to go west at midnight with the new superintendent's
service-car, running as a special train.

Svenson, the caller, who brought the order from the Copah
sub-despatcher's office, unloaded his news upon the circle of R.B.W.
engineers, firemen, and roundhouse roustabouts lounging on the benches
in the tool-room and speculating morosely upon the probable changes
which the new management would bring to pass.

"Ve bane got dem new boss, Ay vant to tal you fallers," he drawled.

"Who is he?" demanded Williams, who had been looking on sourly while the
engine-despatcher chalked his name on the board for the night run with
the service-car.

"Ay couldn't tal you his name. Bote he is dem young faller bane goin'
'round hare dees two, t'ree days, lukin' lak preacher out of a yob.
Vouldn'd dat yar you?"

Williams rose up to his full height of six-feet-two, and flung his
hands upward in a gesture that was more expressive than many oaths.

"_Collars-and-Cuffs, by God!_" he said.

II

THE RED DESERT

In the beginning the Red Desert, figuring unpronounceably under its
Navajo name of Tse-nastci--Circle-of-Red-Stones--was shunned alike by
man and beast, and the bravest of the gold-hunters, seeking to penetrate
to the placer ground in the hill gulches between the twin Timanyoni
ranges, made a hundred-mile detour to avoid it.

Later, the discoveries of rich "pocket" deposits in the Red Butte
district lifted the intermontane hill country temporarily to the high
plane of a bonanza field. In the rush that followed, a few pr